Raymond Wilson’s Comment on Harold Agnew’s Interview with Hibakusha in 2005
Raymond Wilson,
a physicist and adviser for scientific section of LinguaHiroshima’s database.
TBS News in 2005—Please watch this video before you read this article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjVXyA9LjY0&feature=share
I believe most younger American physicists would think otherwise; if they have thought at all about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Harold Agnew’s entire adult life was centered on nuclear weapons and the superior defense of the United States. He seemed to carry the attack on Pearl Harbor in his mind until he died (in 2013).
Agnew is quoted as saying, “I have always felt that science and the military should work together. And they have, from Day One, whether it was Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo or whoever. They were always designing things for the people in charge.” He was actively involved in the design of nuclear weapons, all his life.
How did he become that way? page 46, in my book.
Download PDF version of Nuclear War: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and A Workable Moral Strategy for Achieving and Preserving World Peace (23 MB, 256 pages)
http://sun.iwu.edu/~rwilson/PNDclass.html
“People say, ‘What did you do in those days?’ And my answer is, ‘Whatever I was told to do.’ I guess I wasn’t learned enough or sophisticated enough to appreciate what it meant in the long run for the future of the world.”— Harold Agnew, Enola Gay scientific observer and later Director, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Here is how it happens in the military, American or Japanese: page 47 in my book:
“Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.” —Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. USMC (Ret.), “Old Gimlet Eye,” “Hell Devil Darling,” “The Fighting Quaker,” and “Old Duckboard.” Brevet Medalist, Congressional Medal of Honor (twice).
Agnew never left “service to the military.” And it seems he never recognized that an atrocity is just that, no matter who commits it, or why it was done. Apparently he has not thought too deeply about his participation in the atrocity. But he did say that future use would be irresponsible. Maybe Agnew did not have enough time to really understand Hiroshima and Nagasaki.